Kristen Knowles

Dr Kristen Knowles is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychology, Sociology and Education Division at Queen Margaret University. She holds a PhD from the University of Stirling (2015) and previously worked on the Scottish Referendum Study at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on evolutionary psychology, particularly face/voice perception, political psychology, memory, and biological psychology. She is a member of the Memory Research Group and teaches biological, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology modules across undergraduate programs. Her work bridges perceptual mechanisms and applied contexts like political decision-making, emphasizing cross-modal signal congruency and trait judgment processes.

Research Interests:

• Evolutionary foundations of social perception
• Cross-modal perception (faces/voices)
• Political psychology applications
• Memory systems and cognitive processes

Teaching emphasizes linking theoretical frameworks to real-world behavioral observations. Recent publications explore leadership perception, vocal cooperativeness cues, and dominance associations in facial morphology.